Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Recently I had some down time due to being a bit sick. While being bored at home I decided to pick up on a project I started a year ago. I was redrawing the covers for the Dorks second series. I originally did these stories after Dave canceled Grubbmaster Pieces. He offered as a form of payment to print out ashcan sized copies of any project I wanted. I think it was something like, 5o copies of 1 book or 25 copies of 2 different books etc. I jumped at the opportunity and went right back to the drawing board and started work on my latest Dorks saga. I had written the scripts and laid out the covers and did thumbnail sketches of the pages of the books. I got as far as finishing the first issue and half of the second issue. I guess at some point I must've reread what I had and realized how far removed the story was from what I had been doing. It mixed some of the characters in a way that any previous ideas I had were never going to work out in this continuity. Needless to say I scrapped the entire project. Here is a look at the original covers of that short lived series and the new up to date covers that I did.Just so you know, the next series of Dorks is the one that is currently collected. I did 5 full issues and part of issue 6. That series was going in the direction I wanted but I fizzled out quickly since issue 1 was done in 1995 (I believe) and issue six was being done in 1999 or 2000. The art was too different and I wanted to restart all over again. To this day we're still waiting.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Let me start off by saying Happy New Year. Not only is this my first post in two months but also the first post of the new year. I'm shure by now many of you readers are asking, "Why is any of this important?" or relevant. It's not really. I just wanted to write out a history of Idiot Press. It's more of a reminder to myself than anything else.

Moving on...I'm guessing from the dates listed in the article (refering to the newspaper clipping) the first convention where I was a guest was in 1994. I really can't say that it was my first comic book convention signing though since this was a sports cards and comics convention. As I remember it there wasn't much in comics going on. David Gruba, my publisher at the time, set the whole thing up. He was even generous enough to give me a lift there. I don't remember much of what happened other than meeting Derrick Martin of Skunk and Sparrow fame. I'd have to check to see if he really did have any fame from the book. The books were oddly printed, as if they were done at a local printer. It was the only time I can remember that all of the people associated with Grubbmaster Pieces were in the same place. The artist for The Firing Squad, John Watson, the artist for Radioactive Roadkill (all David Gruba projects), Jerry I forget his last name and I were present to sign and discuss the upcoming zine. We were seated next to Derrick Martin whom I had fun talking to and he was the first person to ink one of my works and showed me that with the proper skills and tools my work could actually look decent. The one thing that is clear to me was when somebody came by and said (jokingly) "You can keep your piece of imagination" and walked away. Oh and I remember that there were no name badges. We just had wristbands or some junk and Dave made the whole group tags to wear and even got the plastic holders for us. If anything I believe this is where my hospitality to my group came from. Trying to give them the most experience as possible. I hope I've succeeded as much as Dave did.